


What the Deuce

by Brillador



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Siblings, Alternate Universe - Twins, Cousins, F/M, Family, Family Shenanigans, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Multi, Other, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9311078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brillador/pseuds/Brillador
Summary: Neal Gold and Lily Vincent don't start on the right foot when they meet at camp. But friendship blooms, and they discover some odd coincidences about each other's families. Before they know it, they've stumbled on a long-kept secret that will throw the Golds and the Vincents for a monumental loop and into an overdue reunion.





	1. Unfortunate Circumstances

Neal should’ve seen this coming—his being sequestered to the far corner of the computer lab with a girl whose gaze could cut glass, which she now directed at his skull. If he had simply stayed level-headed, he would’ve backed off and avoided this. But no, he couldn’t manage to be a sensible person. There was plenty of blame to lob at the glowering girl next to him, but he mostly, and silently, berated himself.

He shouldn’t have let Lily get to him. He should’ve noticed her animosity and sidestepped it on the first day of tech camp. The first lunch, specifically. But avoiding aggressive girls hadn’t been on his mind. He’d been busy looking for a table since his roommates, Michael and John Darling, had gone ahead without him. The prospect of eating in a college dining hall had weakened his knees. With haste, he’d navigated past college students to the part of the hall reserved for the middle-school and high-school kids attending the camp.

That’s when, by chance, his eyes found Emma: bright, grinning, playfully side-eying her friend over a remark.

Neal felt he was seeing a lighthouse. Sure, blame volatile hormones, but a bout of courage (or desperation for a seat) prompted him to rein in his nerves over talking to a pretty girl—a pair of pretty girls, he noticed once he widened his focus—and to approach the table with what he hoped looked like casual friendliness.

“Hey, is it all right if I sit here?”

The contrast in the girls’ reactions was the prelude to everything. The blonde girl eyed him with caution, but her wariness faded behind a smile and what he dared to think was a spark of interest. The black-haired girl with full, frowning eyebrows and nighttime eyes showed nothing but distrust. She looked annoyed and offended that a strange boy had interrupted their insular comradery.

“Sure, go ahead,” said the blonde.

The brunette glanced at her friend, distrust turning to distress. The blonde didn’t notice.

Neal hesitated. Maybe he was about to make unintentional waves. But hey, the brunette could’ve just been shy. He’d be nice, make a little small talk, and maybe she’d relax.

Emma introduced herself right off the bat. When her friend refused to make a peep, Neal shared his name, coupled with eye contact. The girl sat stiffly, as if she suspected he had a knife palmed under the table. Yup, the promise of things to come. He got along well with Emma with hardly any missteps, which in his fifteen-year-old mind was a miracle. Maybe Lily’s reticence was a cosmic counterbalance. That didn’t mean her reticence had to evolve to hostility like a resentment-fueled Pokémon.

Whenever he and the girls ran into each other, Emma let him join them while they walked or got snacks at one of the campus cafes before heading to their respective activities. They were in the same game design class, too. More mixed blessings. Neal had asked about their project, or what their other summer plans were. A few times, Lily had rolled her eyes or muttered that they didn’t have time to chat, or that he was interrupting their conversation. Flashes of embarrassment came and went with Emma—either she was only half-aware of her friend’s rudeness or was trying to deny it.

He hadn’t intended to insert himself into their team, if that was Lily’s problem. He was working with John and Michael on an adventure platformer set on a mysterious island, committed mainly to the artistic side of his group project. Emma and Lily were brainstorming a racing game, along the lines of Mario Cart meeting Grand Theft Auto. There wasn’t much he could do to undermine their work. Emma was the one asking more questions about his ideas. Neal happily answered them, too glad to have her attention to care if her racing game somehow lifted ideas from his island fantasy adventure.

Despite no overlap between their games, Lily was the one who started inexplicably walking by Neal’s computer at his team’s work station. Neal caught her observing his work on the graphics while John coded and Michael contributed ideas to mechanics. After the third time Lily sauntered by them, Neal warned the brothers. Michael flailed a little, more worried about losing credits for an unoriginal game than having his ideas stolen. John assured both his younger brother and Neal that no one was getting their hands on the game code.

If only it had been as simple as theft of intellectual property. If only Neal hadn’t misread Lily’s intentions. At the end of the first week, on the day each group had to present the first phase of game development, complete with a rudimentary demo or, at the very least, concept art and level layouts, Neal’s team volunteered to go first. The coding for their first level was fine, untouched. When Neal pulled up the files for his landscapes and character designs, he gaped at the sight of his lush jungle footpaths, waterfalls and caves recolored in neon rainbow hues. Instead of gleaming crocodiles and iridescent, carnivorous birds big enough to eat grown men, buck-toothed and googly-eyed unicorns haunted the environs. All things considered, the giggles and snickers peeling throughout the classroom were mild, hardly the stuff of mortifying nightmares, but Neal turned hot anyway. One giggling spectator was also sitting back with her arms folded, far too proud to be just amused. Emma, right next to Lily, wasn’t laughing or even smiling. She mostly frowned in helpless confusion. Her attention slid to Lily with half-realized suspicion.

Neal wasn’t the only one upset.

“What the hell did you do that for?!” John shrilly whispered once they’d escaped from class.

“It wasn’t me! You know I’d never do that!”

“I encrypted all our files! No one could’ve hacked into them—”

“So sure of yourselves.”

The boys all but jumped at Lily’s unwanted arrival. Neither John nor Michael recognized her, even if they could begin to guess what she’d done. Her smirk and cocked hips spoke volumes.

Seeing Michael and John so baffled by this girl, a stranger to them, someone they’d never done a thing to, incited Neal more than any personal insult would have. Teeth bared, and for once in his life hoping he could be as intimidating as his father to people who pissed him off, he rushed up Lily, stopping only a few inches short of collision. A quick blink in his field of vision reminded him that Emma was coming out the classroom door.

“If you have a problem with me, keep it between us! Those guys didn’t deserve that!”

“You can’t prove anything,” Lily answered, her voice light and coy. “But it looks like whoever did the art was the only one who screwed up. The game levels worked just fine.”

“It doesn’t matter! This is their game, too!”

“And you broke through my encryption!” John stepped up. His glare was surprisingly effective through the glasses. “That’s destruction of private property!”

Lily deigned to give John all of one glimpse. Her primary focus was reserved for Neal. “Again, you can’t prove anything.”

“I don’t need to!” Neal shouted. “I’ll tell the teacher exactly what you did! Want me to post it on Facebook? Twitter? So everyone knows what a—”

“Hey!” Emma shouted.

His heart could’ve dropped out of his chest and flopped on the floor. Neal didn’t doubt, much as he wanted to, that Emma’s reprimand was aimed at him.

She charged like a Valkyrie, ready to defend her friend’s honor regardless the suspicions he’d seen in her face earlier. “Lily didn’t do anything! She’s not that kind of person! And if you start spreading crap about her, I’ll make you sorry!”

For a moment, he did consider yielding. The last thing he wanted was to incur the wrath of a girl he had a crush on. He certainly didn’t want to throw mud at someone who didn’t deserve it. How could Emma be so confident of Lily’s innocence? Maybe he should trust her, wait this out—

Lily’s smirk grew. “I told you he was a punk-ass loser.”

The words fell like snow and stung like frostbite. They burned away Neal’s good sense. He glared at Lily, then shot a pained look at Emma. “I’m sorry, but it’s not worth this. I didn’t do _anything_ to deserve this.”

Another scowl at Lily. “Kiss your credits goodbye.”

Another sad glance at Emma. “I’m sorry. I hope you find better friends.”

He marched to the classroom. By now, a gaggle of curious teens loitered in small clumps, their attention snagged by the shouting. Some kids continued to watch as Neal headed to the room to report his classmate.

Their nosiness was rewarded. Lily went off like a ticking bomb. She’d held still, watching, barely shaking, until Neal came within two feet of the door. Then she launched after him. A tiger would’ve envied her speed and bloodlust.

Lily matched Neal in height but had a lighter frame. Rather than knock him over, she jumped on his back and lock her arms around his head and neck. The new weight unbalanced him so that he lumbered forward. He had enough self-preservation instinct to turn as he reached the door and partly use Lily’s body to absorb the impact. The pain was evident by her grunt. She wasn’t deterred. She twisted herself against the momentum of Neal’s body so he again lost his balance. This time, nothing saved him from hitting the ground. They both cried out and groaned while rolling across the linoleum. Each scrambled to gain the upper hand.

Emma’s, “Oh my God!” drowned in a tsunami of excited shouts from spectators who were now pooling around the wrestling kids.

No matter how many times Neal managed to get on top of Lily and pin one of her arms, she found a vulnerable spot to knee or elbow. Even in the heat of battle, Neal minded where his hands went. That put him at a disadvantage. When he got a hold of both her wrists, Lily writhed and went as far as spitting in his face. She fought dirty, but it occurred to Neal later that she could’ve swung things fully in her favor as soon as the teacher showed up. She could’ve played the victim, as though she were the one being assault. Granted, several people could verify that she started the fight, but that would’ve carried only so much weight. In the instant that it happened, when she knocked her forehead into his spittle-covered mug and flung him on his back so she could pounce, Neal saw their teacher and burned with humiliation. By the time Lily heard the man shouting at them to stop, it was too late to cover the vicious snarl on her face with tears and pleas.

They’d been forced to a sit-down with the camp director in one of the cramped, too brightly lit administrative offices. The teacher had told them they’d be lucky not to get their butts sent home right then and there. The director, Ms. Shepherd, was a stern woman with a small, often pursued mouth. Her stare made even Lily squirm. She declared that the camp, rarely needing to discipline campers for physical assault, was willing to exercise a one-warning policy, since no one was severely hurt. Their parents would be notified of the incident and informed of the punishment awaiting them: bathroom duty in the dorms, Neal for the boys, Lily for the girls. And, in light of their shared class and Lily’s apparent sabotage of Neal’s work, Ms. Shepherd deemed it fitting to pair them off. They would start over with a new game project. Bathroom cleaning earned disgusted winces; at the second punitive measure, they gawked in outrage.

“If you want to win enough credits for a prize at the end of camp, you’d better figure out how to work together.” Shepherd dug her stare into each of them. “Surely a brother and sister can learn to be civil.”

“What?” Lily barked.

“We’re _not_ brother and sister!” Neal was nauseous. How could anyone think he was related to this crazy chick?

The director sat back. She hadn’t been joking. “Huh. Well, forgive me. I thought I saw a resemblance.”

For the first time, even as anger boiled under their skins, Neal and Lily peeked at each other, searching yet skeptical. The look ended with them turning away like repelled magnets.

“Remember,” Shepherd said, “one more toe out of line and you’ll both be sent home.”

The threat sat in their thoughts as they sat together in the classroom the next day, but it motivated neither of them to work on their joint project. Neal doodled in his notebook, which gave the teacher the impression that something was getting accomplished.

“You two better have something by the end of class,” he warned as he walked by, particularly at Lily. Her hands were occupied staying warm under her arms, and her attention was rapt on the clock over the classroom door.

More unproductive minutes rolled by. Neal peered up and noticed everyone else crowded around their computers, invested in their work. A drop of self-loathing somehow changed into motivation— whether to avoid disappointing himself or to spite Lily remained to be seen. Neal resumed drawing, now with purpose. He couldn’t use the idea he’d discussed with his former teammates; they were now assisted by a boy named Rufio on the art. Emma had been reassigned join two sisters, Elsa and Anna, who at least seemed nice. Anna was the chattiest one, but in the brief intervals where she stopped talking, Emma and Elsa exchanged friendly words while working. Emma snuck a glimpse far across the room, met by Neal’s curious gaze. He ducked back into the notebook.

After scribbling some new ideas—monsters that John and Michael didn’t think would fit in their island, badass warrior women, dark wizards trying to open a portal to another dimension—Neal gave up inventing a story and turned his energy to sketches. He started with a model for a heroine dressed in a knight’s tunic and pants. She carried a sword. Not a fully armored knight—more like a wandering rogue who belonged nowhere but helped anyone she could in her travels. He set her up against a dragon that had Lily’s eyes.

“What are you doing?”

Neal snapped his head toward Lily. She’d gotten up and behind him to spy over his shoulder. He slapped the notebook shut.

“What do you care? You want to ruin another drawing of mine for no good reason?”

Lily pressed her lips together, the first hint of guilt. “It was just a prank.” Not nearly as much guilt as he’d hoped.

“No, it wasn’t. If you have a problem with me, just tell me what it is.”

Lily snorted. “As if that would do any good.”

Neal held his notebook in a protective pose, but he turned his swivel chair so he faced her. “We’re stuck together. You might as well. Do you just hate guys?”

“You’d like to think that.” Lily stomped back to her chair. Even as she plopped down, she let the chair spin around enough that they looked at each other. “I know you have designs on Emma.”

Neal would’ve laughed if the meaning of her words didn’t leave a queasy feeling in his stomach. “‘Designs?’ This isn’t Victorian times.”

“You know what I mean.” She crossed her legs, imbuing her attitude with false sophistication.

“If you mean I like Emma, sure. She seems like a cool person.”

Lily scoffed. “Right, that’s all it is. She’s ‘cool.’”

“What is your problem? It’d be one thing if Emma didn’t want me around. If that’s what’s going on, I won’t bother her anymore. But she hasn’t said or done anything to make me think so. _You’re_ the one being a—”

“A bitch?” The word rolled off her tongue with adult ease.

While he’d been tempted to blurt out it earlier, Neal didn’t have the nerve or anger to say the word now. He was tired of being angry. “You’re the one who doesn’t like me. That’s what I’m getting at. What have I done? If I’ve offended you, I didn’t mean to.”

Lily fell back on nonverbal resistance, but her closed-off posture looked more awkward than defiant. Maybe she was getting embarrassed over her own behavior, or at least the reasons behind it. Neal tried to resume sketching (and brainstorming to how to grovel to Director Shepherd for another project partner). However, for all his understandable ire, he’d been bitten by the curiosity bug. He checked in with Lily and saw that she was simply stewing, and not necessarily over him. But several minutes later, she nearly debunked this notion.

“She doesn’t need a boy in her life,” she said, crisp and quiet.

Neal paused, despite being a few strokes away from deeming his dragon drawing complete. “Did she say that?” He didn’t expect an honest answer. That didn’t stop him from seeking one.

Lily shifted her shoulders, as though fighting against the impulse to give him what he wanted, or to tell him what she wanted him to believe. “I know her. She’s had guys let her down. She doesn’t need any more of that.”

“I’m not like that.” Neal kept his voice low, controlled. He would avoid another fight. “It may be hard to believe since we barely know each other. And yeah, I like Emma, but not just in _that_ way. If I can only be her friend, that’s fine.”

She watched him askance. “I’ve never met a guy who didn’t have a problem being friend-zoned.”

“Maybe all the guys you know are jerks.” He shrugged. A little smile bled through.

“I don’t doubt that. That’s why it’s just Emma and me. We don’t need anyone else.”

A niggling question jumped into Neal’s mind, but he let a few moments of reflection pass before posing it. “Only you two? You must have other friends.”

Lily half-shrugged. She didn’t look at him.

More reflection brought an epiphany. Suddenly all the irrational hatred, even the sabotage, made some sense. And with it, Neal’s anger all but melted. All right, a smidgen sat like a dying ember in his chest, but most of him ached with sympathy. “All right,” he said gently. “I get it.”

Lily was as on fire as ever, even in silence. “Get what?”

Neal licked his lips as he picked his words. It was like crossing a minefield. “Emma is your best friend. Maybe the only real friend you feel you can depend on. You don’t want anything, or anyone, getting in the way of that.”

The words had her flinching, but she turned her chair in his sole direction. Neal braced his hands on his chair’s armrests in case he had to dodge an attack.

“Don’t act like you know me, or Emma. You’re just some guy who wants to get into my friend’s pants.”

“That’s not true!” He straight away regretted the lack of restraint when half a dozen heads, including the teacher’s, turned to them. To make the teacher think he and Lily were deliberating over their project, he rolled his chair closer to hers and bowed his head.

“First of all, I’m not trying to seduce your friend. I wouldn’t know how. And if you’re so sure she’s not interested in dating, you don’t have anything to worry about. Second, I’d have been happy to be your friend, too, if you’d let me.”

“Not interested,” Lily sniped.

“Fine. Third, I do understand. I don’t have a lot of friends back home, either. I’m not one of the popular kids, and I don’t care about being popular, or having tons of friends. But it was nice knowing there were some kids my age to hang out with. Emma seems like someone who’ll give you a chance to sit with her and have a conversation without it being super awkward. I’m sorry if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem I am.”

The change happened in seconds. Even as she scowled, her chin tightened and her eyes watered. Neal froze in panic. Oh, God, was she going to cry? Was she going to tell the teacher he was bullying her?

“How can you possibly know that?” She sniffed. Her eyes held their water. “You’ve know her for barely a week. You made that assumption just by looking at her. You can’t know her that quickly. It’s just a line.”

“Hey,” Neal whispered. He stopped his hand from reaching for hers. “I’m not trying to upset you. I don’t know how I know that about Emma. I saw her and I . . . I just trusted my gut.”

Hands clutched, Lily stared down. Her long lashes hid the tears, but now and then a flicker of light betrayed dew.

“What’s wrong? Seriously.”

“It’s nothing.” Some tears dripped. She rubbed her eye with her jacket sleeve.

Neal looked at the teacher. He hadn’t noticed Lily starting to cry. If he did, that would create new problems fast. Neal then remembered a gift from his dad on his last birthday, one he thought kind of ridiculous at the time, but hey, he’d take it. He rolled his chair over to his backpack, came back with it, opened the smaller pocket and pulled out a folded square of cloth.

“Here.” He held it out to Lily.

She had to wipe her eyes to see. Her confusion only deepened. “The hell is that?”

“A handkerchief.” Neal didn’t bother hiding his embarrassment. “My dad thinks they should come back in fashion. Personally, I think they’re silly, but I don’t have any tissues.”

As though half-certain it was poisoned, Lily plucked up the kerchief by only two fingers and shook it open. On the white cloth’s corner, the letters N.G. were stitched in gold-colored thread.

“Are . . . are those your initials?”

Neal winced. “Yeah.”

Lily snorted, almost laughing. “Is your dad for real?”

“Not really.”

“Sad thing is, I think my mom might carry one of these around, too.” That seemed reason enough to mop up her eyes with the kerchief. Once she was done, she returned it to Neal. A quiet minute went by. Her attention drifted to the notebook in his lap.

“So, are you going to tell me what you’ve been drawing? Is it for a game?”

Neal picked up the book, more inclined to share, but he waved it at her as he asked, “Can I be sure you’re not going to draw stupid eyes and big teeth on these?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Not if it’s my game, too.”

With a budding smile, Neal opened the book. “It’s a vague idea. If you have any suggestions—”

“Wow.” She studied the scene of the warrior girl standing against a mighty, beautiful dragon and a horde of monsters scattered all over the page. “You can make that on a computer?”

“If I have enough time. You like it?”

“Yeah. As long as the dragon is truly badass, I’m on board.”

Neal lowered the book and gave her a thoughtful look. “I’m going to take a wild guess that you’ve got some coding experience.”

Half her mouth curled while she bit the other side. “You could say that.”

He nodded. “All right. We better get started.”


	2. Coincidences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With their relationship on better footing, Neal and Lily learn more about each other--far more than they could've expected.

It started with the typical getting-to-know-you questions. Maybe most people wouldn’t start to get to know someone they’ve known for a week under less than favorable circumstances. Not to mention that they were currently sneaking in extra work time on their shared game in the lab at nearly seven o’clock at night. They were struggling to stay focused, though, having come up with a baseline for a dragon-hunting plot with no title. Lily wanted to use “dragon” in its name, but a few Google searches turned up way too many pre-existing titles. To give their creative juices time to replenish, both Lily and Neal sat back in their seats. She stared at a screen full of code while he stared at polished, digital renditions of their heroine in various game-based poses.

“You never mentioned where you’re from,” Lily asked out of the blue. Apparently, personal questions as well as barbeque chips helped her reset.

“Neither did you,” Neal pointed out.

“Boston.”

“Really? I would’ve guessed New York.”

“I’d love to live in New York. Anything to get a break from my family.” Lily paused with a slight grimace. She’d caught herself blurting out something she’d meant to keep to herself. “I mean, I love them and all, but they can be a bit much.”

Neal nodded. “My dad’s like that. He does too much checking-in. He’s texted me _every day_ since I’ve been here. I told him I wasn’t going to answer until bedtime. He hasn’t quite gotten it.”

“Yeah? What about your mom?”

The hint of a side-twisted frown earned a quick apology from her. Neal shook his head. “It’s all right. I haven’t heard from her in a while. She calls now and then. Just as well. Dad is enough to handle.”

Lily somberly dug into her bag of chips. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, really. My parents divorced years ago. I was in first grade, so, I’ve had time to deal with it.”

“I doubt it’ll make you feel better, but I don’t even know my dad.”

Neal sat up in his chair. His eyebrows rose with joking concern. “We’re not secretly brother and sister, are we?”

Bits of potato chips flew fell out of Lily’s laughing mouth. “I hope not!” She wiped her mouth. “My mom’s name is Mal.”

“Mine’s Milah. That’s a little too close for comfort.”

“Mom is blonde, tall, about 50 years old.”

He slapped his chest. “Oh, thank God,” he coughed out.

As she giggled, an intrigued look crept into Lily’s expression. “That doesn’t rule out the possibility that your dad and my mom had an affair.”

“At about the same time my parents had me? I can’t see him doing that.”

She shrugged. “You never know.”

“No way. Here, I’ll show you a photo of him.” Neal took out his phone and pulled up the photo gallery. “You and he look nothing alike.”

Other kids might’ve jeered at how he had a photo of him and his father. Granted, it was his father’s birthday, and the candles from the cake unintentionally cast ominous shadows on Rumford Gold’s face. That alone made the picture a keeper. Neal’s face was harder to see, but his smile was clear while his father’s just as easily could’ve been a real smile or a demonic smirk. It was terrifyingly hilarious.

Lily scoffed from the first glance. “Is this your way of telling me your dad is Lucifer?”

“He’d take that as a compliment.”

“Hah! Nice. When was his birthday?”

“January 9th.”

The impact of that sentence was far from earth-shattering, but its ripple effect stretched beyond anything he or Lily could’ve predicted. While Neal sat there oblivious, fondly admiring and chuckling at his father, Lily was close to losing her eyes. They wanted that badly to pop out of the sockets.

“You’re shitting me,” she said.

Neal looked up, feeling like he’d been slapped with a fish. “What? No, of course not.”

“That’s my mom’s birthday.”

His mouth dropped opened, then spread upward in a grin. “You serious? That’s crazy!”

Lily didn’t look nearly as tickled. “What are the odds?”

“Yeah, I know!”

“How old is your dad?”

“Forty-eight.”

Now Lily looked a bit crazed.  “So’s my mom.”

Neal narrowed his gaze. Maybe she was trolling him. “I thought you said she was fifty.”

“ _Almost_ fifty.”

“Oh.” His amusement followed hers into oblivion. “Wait, are you joking? They’re the same age?”

“Sharing the same birthday,” she whispered.

A chill skirted down his back. Neal wasn’t sure if this information or Lily’s wild-eyed look caused it. “Okay. That means—”

“Born _exactly_ the same day.”

“That’s . . . that’s an insane coincidence. But I guess it’s possible. There’s, like, one person born every four seconds, right? Or maybe four minutes. I can’t remember which.”

Lily slowly unwound as she leaned back. “I guess that’s right.” The puff of air escaping her foam-stuffed computer chair matched her deflating expression. And yet a lingering sharpness in her stare kept Neal worried.

The alarm on his wrist watch rattled them back to reality.

“Hey, dinner time,” Neal said.

Lily blinked. “Yeah, sure. Let me text Emma and see if she’s already at the cafeteria.”

* * *

About six hours later, Neal’s phone sang a techno tune. He groaned. The morning had come too early.

Well, he was right, but 1:24 a.m. wasn’t the definition of “morning” he had in mind. The noise from his phone was a notification for a text. He had to rub his eyes thoroughly  before the bleariness cleared enough that he could read it. The light was far too bright for the total darkness of his dorm room. He checked that Michael and John hadn’t been disturbed. They slept in the opposite bunks, sound asleep.

Squinting, Neal read: _Need u 2 look @ this. Txt me._

He hadn’t plugged in the name for the person whose number now loomed above the text message, but he gradually remembered that it was Lily’s. After reading the truncated words a couple times, not entirely convinced he wasn’t dreaming, he watched another data-loaded message come through. There was a photo attached to this one. He enlarged it.

In the picture, three teenagers stood crowded together. Two girls, one boy. The boy and the girl on his left looked about Neal’s age. The other girl was a few years younger. The photo had faded a bit to sepia, suggesting its age, yet the kids looked like anyone he might go to school with. Except that one of them was vaguely, uncomfortably recognizable.

Neal maximized the photo as best he could. The girls sandwiched in the boy. Both girls had long, straight, dark hair. The older girl on the left had Polynesian features while the other—well, he wasn’t sure if she had mixed ethnicity or was just white with unusual bone structure. The boy had the broadest smile of all of them. His dirty blond hair caught some shine from the sun. Blue eyes laughed at Neal. The kids were all grinning. This was the peak of their lives.

A studious examination of the boy brought back other images Neal had seen in a home movie. His grandfather, on a rare visit, had sat him down to “appreciate” a few reels of footage from the old man’s childhood. Neal did appreciate them. He got to glimpse at a part of his family he didn’t know much about. He watched Grandpa Malcolm run around as a tyke in the nude (a fact Malcolm was far from ashamed of) while tiny Aunt Maimie threw her pacifier at him. There was more footage, much of it starring Malcolm with Maimie appearing in about half. The other half featured Malcolm’s friends, who later became bandmates. The vintage hairstyles had made Neal laugh. His grandpa had aimed a disapproving but amused eyebrow at him. There was a lot to find memorable in those home movies, but none more than his granddad’s young, grinning mug. The same mug staring at him now.

Neal texted Lily back: _Where did you get it?_ His heartrate climbed as logic sunk into his half-wakeful brain.

Waiting for her reply was painful. It took six minutes. _My great aunt gave it 2 me. On the left._

His shiver came partly from uncanny excitement. _U know the boy?_

_She said he’s my grandfather._

Neal didn’t like using all caps when it wasn’t called for. He immediately replied: _WHAT?!_

 _U know him?_ she asked.

_He’s MY grandfather._

_U sure?_

It was close to an insult that she doubted him and didn’t deign to using caps lock, too.

_99.99% sure._

_Other girl = grandmother. Girls r half sisters._

_U know the names?_

_Granny Melanie & Great Aunt Lila_

He didn’t know those names. While he was aware of the hour, an itch in his fingers urged him to call his dad and ask for his grandmother’s name. Straight away he backed off from the notion. What little he knew of his family history consisted of his father being raised by two aunts while Grandpa Malcolm traveled for work. That was the cleaned-up version Pop had pitched to him for years. It was around middle school that Neal, meeting and befriending kids from broken homes, learned that abandonment wasn’t just a thing, but a thing that may well have happened to his own father. At first, he reasoned that it didn’t totally count, not if Malcolm dropped by every blue moon. Lots of kids didn’t know their grandparents that well. But Neal knew his great-aunts. It struck him how he had a more familial intimacy with them than his grandfather. And there was always tension whenever Pop and Grandpa occupied the same room.

His maternal grandmother never came up on Pop’s end. Neal presumed she’d died long ago, maybe even in childbirth.

He gulped and texted Lily back. _Is your grandma alive?_

Another minute dilated close to the point of breaking his sanity.

_Yes. Lives in Boston._

A weight dropped away. Not for any good reason other than to be glad for Lily, he told himself.

_Have u met your grandpa?_

_No. Divorced._

Oh. Why hadn’t he considered that? Maybe his grandparents divorced when Pop was really young. Maybe Pop didn’t even remember her that well. But why would his grandmother never visit? Was the pregnancy an accident? Had his grandparents even married in the first place? Neal felt a headache coming on.

And there was the question of Lily’s family—no. He had to stop drawing the conclusion Lily had directed him toward over their parents’ shared birthdays. But his grandfather knew her grandmother and great-aunt. Could that be mere coincidence, too?

His phone notification alarm sang quietly. Another text. _Neal?_

Neal exited the text chat. He called Lily’s number. She picked up on the second ring. “Hey.” Her whisper punched through the speaker, barely controlled.

“Hey.”

“So, uh, are you freaking out, too?”

“Not sure yet. We should . . . I mean, it’d be a good idea to—”

“Check this out?”

She’d stolen his words. A feverish heatwave stole over him. His brain replayed a composite memory of Aunt Maimie and Aunt Penny talking to him. They finished each other’s sentences with eerie synchronization.

“Yeah, exactly,” Neal finished one his breathing was steady.

“Meet me at the library lab after class,” Lily said. “I know a way we can find out for sure if . . . you know.”

“How?”

“Leave it to me. I’ll explain tomorrow. Gotta go.”

“’kay. Night.”

The click was too loud in the nightly silence. Neal played around with the idea of calling Lily back for more details. Most of him wanted to stuff his phone under his pillow or in his backpack, pretend this exchange never happened, and sleep in blissful ignorance. Maybe he’d wake up and find out this was a scarily lucid dream. He couldn’t remember a dream being so stubborn as he snuggled down and stared at the opposite wall, ideas spinning in his head like the wheels of an overturned, useless bicycle. It took forever for the momentum of his thoughts to finally wind down.

* * *

A quick self-assessment the next morning brought more grounding to Neal’s dizzy, weightless confusion than he expected. His stomach was alive like a beehive, yet apprehension sweetened to curiosity. He was a jittery mess and he couldn’t even blame caffeine by the time he was at the library, arriving a few minutes early of the appointed time.

Lily was already there. She was planted at her own laptop on a lab table left bare for kids who brought their own computers and plugged them into the row of outlets running down the center of aligned tabletops. Her thick eyebrows sat together, joined in concentration. Neal imagined the expression on a huntress tracking down a dragon through the wilds of an enchanted land. Then he imagined the same expression on the hunted dragon’s face, equally determined to find its quarry.

Neal came within five feet of her and properly announced himself. “Hey.”

Lily started all the same. Alarm was swept away by the relief and eagerness of someone meeting a coconspirator. “Hey, great timing. Take a look at this!”

He rolled up a free chair next to her. A quick study of the screen had him on the chair’s edge. Lily had pulled up several web pages, one with a UK address for a government site. It was a confirmation page for an order of some kind.

“What did you order?” he asked.

“Our parents’ birth certificates.”

“What?” Neal hunched at his own loud outburst. More softly he asked, “How did you pull that off? I didn’t even tell you—”

“I’ve been researching since last night.” Lily smiled sheepishly. “I should say I’ve been researching _you_ since last night. I noticed you sent Emma a Facebook friend invite. I got into her account, accepted it, and searched through your page.”

“Okay. How did you get into—”

“Emma’s passwords aren’t exactly cryptic. Anyway, I grabbed a picture of your dad from one of your photos, sent it to a friend—a programming geek—to run facial recognition for me.”

“Facial—can’t only the government do that?”

“Oh no. If you know where to look, you can find someone who’s written that kind of program themselves. My friend sent me back some search results. Not a lot—your dad doesn’t have much of an internet presence, but I learned where he went to school as a kid. Got his name, confirmed his date of birth thanks to you, and I plugged the info into this site—” Lily pointed, barely taking a pause—“to order a new birth certificate. It’ll take a few weeks, but we’ll find out for sure, without a doubt, if what I suspect is true.”

Neal had been riding on her words like a roller coaster, too winded and astounded to cut her short. Now that she’d come to a halt, he jumped off as quickly as his frazzled brain could manage. He waved a hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Why were you looking up my dad? Is this about that photo?”

“The one with our grandparents? Of course!”

“What do you mean, ‘of course’?”

“You think it’s just a coincidence that your granddad is in a photo with my grandma and great-aunt?”

Neal shrugged slowly. “What else would you call it?”

“A freaking clue, that’s what!” Lily scoured her jacket pocket, whipped out her wallet, opened it and slipped out with extraordinary care the photo she’d sent him. Neal didn’t realize Lily had snapped a digital photo of the original with her phone—she’d done a good job with the alignment and lighting. Or maybe she’d already scanned and downloaded it to her computer before coming to camp. But why carry around the original? She held it the way Neal would hold a favorite CD, back before his dad wised up to iPods. Her fingers touched only the edges to avoid damaging smudges.

“You’re forgetting that this boy, according to Aunt Lila, is my granddad, too. So we have the same grandfather! That alone makes us related!”

Neal swallowed and finally let what she was saying, which was nothing but the truth, have its way. He looked at teenage Grandpa Malcolm, then Lily. While her complexion, hair and eyes were all darker than his, the overall shape of her features did faintly echo Malcolm’s. Neal hadn’t examined his own face in comparison to his grandpa’s. A few people had said he strongly resembled his mother, except for the eyes, brown like his dad’s. Brown like Lily’s. And like those of the girl she said was her grandmother.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Holy shit, indeed.” Lily lowered the photo but didn’t put it away. Her hand rested on her lap. The photo stayed facing up at them. “You know what the amazing thing is?”

He hardly dared ask. “What?”

“That of all the ways we’d meet, it was at some camp.” Her elated expression turned pensive. “Do you think our parents know? Could they have planned this?”

“My dad isn’t the most open person, but he’d _never_ not tell me this. What would be the point? It’s more likely he doesn’t know. We don’t even know the whole story. Maybe we have the same grandfather but different grandmothers. That could explain it.”

“True. That’s why we need the birth certificates. They’ll tell us who our parents’ parents are. But think about it—your mom and my dad share a birthday. They’re the same age. Either that’s a huge coincidence, or . . .”

The purposeful trailing off reminded Neal of his teachers at school. They used that tactic to get the kids to participate in class discussion. Either Lily was testing his intelligence or she wanted him to say what he clearly had avoided articulating. Because, come on, it was too ridiculous! How could the universe drop that kind of bomb on someone? On a whole family!

“ _Or_ ,” Lily pushed.

Mega bomb-drop or not, it was a truth he had to be ready to face.

Neal inhaled. “Or they’re twins.”

She nodded. For once she had no words to follow with. That made him feel a little better. Better enough that he laughed in sheer astonishment at, well, everything. She joined him.

“I just realized something else,” she said after their laughter and incredulity leveled off.

“Oh great. What new epiphany are you having now?”

“You never told me where you’re from.”

Neal laughed again. “Oh, right! I’m from a tiny town in southern Maine. It’s called Storybrooke.”


	3. Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumford Gold counts down the days to Neal's return and grapples with someone spilling the beans about his impending marriage.

The last week and a half had felt impossibly long.

Neal’s absence wasn’t completely to blame, but it was a factor. His being in another state for camp this year shouldn’t have made much difference—two weeks away from home measured the same for both him and Rumford Gold no matter where they each were. The older Gold justified his restless anxiety with the fact that he couldn’t visit the camp at the drop of a hat (well, he _could_ if he were desperate). He’d not done that since Neal was in sixth grade, when his son had laid out all the valid reasons a boy his age didn’t need and didn’t _want_ his father checking in halfway through sleep-away camp in person. At least the option had been there, regardless.

Instead, Rumford had to ease his worries with routine text messages. He eventually learned to restrain himself to early-evening well wishes rather than sprinkling them throughout the day. “If he’s not answering,” Belle had advised, “that’s probably a good thing. It means he’s busy or having fun with other kids.”

Rumford had half-seriously retorted, “What if he’s not answering because he’s paralyzed?”

“I think you should be more worried that he’s annoyed by all the messages.”

“Point taken.”

Rumford settled for the nightly greeting and a countdown of the days till he picked up Neal. Of course, crossing off the days on the calendar was a guaranteed way to delay the inevitable crawl of time.

All these little torturous details accounted for, the wait for Neal wasn’t the only reason he wanted to drink himself into an oblivious stupor.

Word had gotten out about the engagement. In an irritatingly cozy town like Storybrooke, secrets couldn’t stay buried. Rumford and Belle did their best to work around this. The wedding would be small-scale, reserved for only their closest loved ones, and even they remained mostly, and temporarily, in the dark. A knot in Rumford’s stomach was born from the wild speculation that Neal, one of the handful of people informed about the engagement, might’ve let it slip to his school friends. But no, his boy knew better. Someone else had to be at fault.

Rumford met no success in solving the mystery. Belle insisted it didn’t matter. One thing they did agree on: being outed for the entertainment of their neighbors was mortifying. But Belle wasn’t going to march into the news station and wrangle the information out of Sydney Glass. Well, that made one of them.

In a brilliant (and frustrating) stroke, she intervened in Rumford’s attempt to bang down the door of the newspaper offices—literally. When she couldn’t talk him out of going inside, she warned him that Sydney probably didn’t know the source (the article cited an anonymous tip) and making a scene would earn only more bad press. Rumford barely contained a grimace as he and his fiancée walked in, side by side, discarding any pretense. He bristled at the sight of Regina Mills in Sydney’s office, a glass room sectioned off from the work floor. No article needed to print for everyone to know that the editor-in-chief was under the mayor’s thumb, hopelessly enchanted and intimidated by her.

Judging from the way she leaned on Sydney’s desk, one-handed so the other could perch on her cocked hip, Regina was very intent on him pulling some favor. Could it have to do with Rumford’s engagement? After many years of deals and business arrangements, he and Regina had developed a rapport that had the unspoken, mutual understanding of like-minded people. That took a turn when it became evident to the town that the taciturn pawnbroker and landlord was dating the sweet librarian. Regina started mocking him and throwing Belle passive-aggressive comments.

While he had to wonder if she found out about the engagement and ordered Sydney to run it, Rumford was a little tickled to see her response. She would’ve loved to humiliate him given any opportunity, but in this case, his impending marriage didn’t qualify as “dirt” in her eyes. But maybe he was underestimating her pettiness.

Belle led the way. She knocked on the office door, not at all spooked by Regina’s presence. The two women were hardly on friendly terms. After some tense confrontations over Regina’s unreasonable cuts to library funding, Belle had resolved to take the high road in future. Regina wanted to get a rise out of Belle if not intimidate her into meekness. Belle squared her shoulders and smiled as Regina and Sydney paused their unheard conversation to look at the intruding couple. She took slower steps so her cane-reliant fiancé could keep up. Rumford more than compensated with his far-reaching glare, which hit Sydney long before Belle greeted him.

“Forgive the interruption,” she said, “but we need to talk to Sydney.”

Sydney stuttered a nervous laugh. “Ah, just one moment, if you please. We were—”

“We’re done for now.” Regina spoke with a calm that belied fire. Her attention shot past Belle to Rumford. “I hear congratulations are in order. When’s the joyful occasion?”

“Haven’t decided,” Rumford said through cutting teeth. “You’ll be the first to know.”

A smirk slid over her ruby lips. She swiveled her attention to Belle. “Don’t let him snake his way out of setting a date. He just might slip through your fingers.” The pearly grin that blossomed was as amiable as a Venus flytrap’s jaws.

The lift of Belle’s chest came from all the words she had to hold back. It killed her, Rumford knew, to let Regina have the last word. If she forsook mature restraint and let her sharp tongue loose, he wouldn’t blame her. In fact, he would’ve mentally cheered, maybe even left Sydney alone so he could take Belle home and show his appreciation, or comfort her if Regina managed to retaliate.

Slightly inappropriate thoughts brushed back, Rumford focused a chill eye on Regina as she sauntered past him out the door. She might’ve exited in good spirits; Mr. Glass wouldn’t, and for now, that would have to suffice.

His icy attention shifted to the newspaper editor. Sydney went as stiff as a statue.

“Sydney,” Belle interjected again—a serious declaration, yet far kinder compared to the stare coming from behind her—“I’m sure you know why we’re here.”

The man’s fear thawed enough so he could answer. “Let me first assure you that I thought the announcement had your blessing.”

“Don’t start lying now.” Rumford kept his voice at a low rumble that made Sydney’s bones shudder.

“I-it’s not a lie. It’s a simple misunderstanding. But I’m afraid what’s done is done.”

“That much is right,” Belle said, letting her vexation manifest. “You had no right to share our personal life without our _explicit_ permission!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s called ‘free press’ for a reason.” Sydney dared the smallest smug smile.

“The term protects you from political imprisonment.” Rumford slowly advanced, a predator moving in on his quarry. “Not from the deep displeasure of your exploitive publications.”

“Exploitive? Look who’s—” Sydney stopped himself.

“Yes? Please, continue.”

“I—I didn’t mean—”

Belle closed in, too. Not to attack. Her body shifted a little further between Sydney and Rumford. Her firm stare was a refuge. Barely so. “Who called in the tip?”

“You know I can’t tell you,” Sydney said almost pleadingly. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

“What reputation is that?” Rumford sniped. “As a snoop and pet for Her Royal Highness? Did she put you up to this?”

“No, and that’s all I can say.”

“You could say a bit more than that. With the right _incentive_.”

“No, I really can’t say who called! I didn’t recognize the voice.”

Rumford laid on as much disgust as a scoff could carry. Belle delivered a disappointed frown that could crush hearts. “Sydney, you wrote an article of interest from an unverifiable source? On the basis of hearsay? Can you imagine now why people don’t hold your newspaper in higher regard? You’re better than that.”

To Rumford’s incredulity, Sydney looked genuinely sheepish. He recovered soon enough, if not with the same unctuous attempts at charm. “I do what I must to keep readers picking up the paper.”

Belle threw up her hands, her composure finally giving way like a worn, overburdened basket. “You have no competition!”

“But I do! Online articles people can find with one Google search! They’re more interested in real celebrities, but they’ll take what they can get in this town. And really, announcing your engagement is hardly the worst news!”

“It’s still private news,” Belle pushed back.

“Well, I’m sorry I ruined the moment. But I did verify the tip. One of my interns noticed the necklace you were wearing. It’s new, and you’ve been hiding whatever’s on it under your clothes. They checked—innocently, as I was told—that it had your ring on it.”

Belle’s hand pressed to her collarbone. It cupped around the barest bump under her blouse.

Rumford stalked up to Sydney’s desk. “You mean to say that one of your goons looked down my _fiancee’s_ shirt?”

Far from being just as appalled, Belle rolled her eyes.

Sydney lurched back all the same. “What do you want me to say, Gold? I’ve apologized! I’ve explained myself!”

“And yet, for some reason, I _still_ want to smash in your skull with this!” Up the cane flew in Rumford’s hand, swinging in the light by the flick of his hand.

Belle grabbed his arm. “Rumford, that’s enough.” She began pulling him away from the desk.

“Answer me this,” Rumford barked, even as his steps reluctantly followed hers, “was the caller male or female?”

“M-Male.” Sydney trembled, maybe a bit from relief that he could throw the snarling dog a scrap of cloth with someone else’s scent.

Rumford was placated enough that Belle could successfully remove him from the building and the premises. She strongly suggested they go for a cool-off walk.

“I don’t want to say I told you so,” she remarked many quiet minutes later as they rounded the corner toward the library.

“Yes, you do,” Rumford said.

“Okay, maybe I do. You get my point, right?”

“At least I know there’s a bloke out there I need to educate in minding his own business.”

“Have you considered that maybe it _was_ Neal? Maybe he was tired of the secrecy but didn’t know how to tell you.”

“I’m not going to assume that. It’s rubbish.”

“We have our reasons for wanting to hold off on the announcement. Whoever did this, maybe they had understandable reasons for wanting it known. Let’s wait to work up a fury when we know the who and why.”

Rumford slowed his walk. “I thought you said you didn’t care who tipped off Glass.”

“I don’t think it should matter.” Belle took advantage of their reduced pace to stop entirely and hold one of Rumford’s hands. “I’m not going to let whoever it was ruin this for us. The best revenge is being too happy to give a damn.”

“Can’t we be happy _and_ want to give the bastard a thrashing?”

“I don’t want to have to marry you in a prison.”

“I’m not going to _murder_ anyone.”

Belle narrowed her eyes. “Assault is still a crime.”

Rumford harrumphed. “When did they add that to the law book?”

“Since the Age of Enlightenment, I’m guessing.” She tilted her head and started to smile.

A burgeoning smile of his own came with a caress down Belle’s shoulder and arm. She leaned into the moving touch. He let the air rest between them, buffeted only by the lightest breeze, before giving his reply. “I am happy. Not about the article, obviously. But I am happy. Happiest I’ve been in a long time. I don’t want that ruined.”

Belle licked her lips. She did that when she was trying to work out a problem. Or was aroused. Rumford safely guessed the former.

“What if we went out of town to get married?”

Rumford’s eyebrows twitched. “You don’t mean Vegas, do you?”

Belle laughed, a welcomed sound. “Somewhere closer, and classier. But just far enough that we won’t have to hear the tittle tattle.”

“Well, once I get Neal from camp, I’ll consider it.”

“Right. We’d have to bring Neal along, right? And your aunts. And Dad.” She pursed her lips. “Hmm, maybe a destination wedding would be tricky.”

“Not impossible. You could still invite your friends.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But thank you for thinking of them, too.”

Up on her toes, she kissed his cheek. That small gesture had done its fair share of soothing his nerves in the following days under every awkward or cheeky glance from the rest of the town. With each one, Rumford was more inclined to take Belle’s suggestion, even if marrying somewhere else created different complications.

Just wait it out, he told himself. Wait till Neal came home. Then, somehow, things would fall into place.


	4. Medication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malandra Vincent waits for her daughter's return from camp. Family, friends and coworkers try to help her cope with Lily's absence. Alcohol is involved with mixed results.

The last week and a half had felt impossibly long.

With Lily out of town, Ella and Ursula had done their part to niggle Malandra to get footloose in the hours between the lab and office. As it turned out, late nights drinking and talking about their school days made time crawl. This should’ve been a good thing, right? Freedom, rejuvenation of bygone youthful foolishness slowed down for maximum enjoyment. None of it enlivened Mal. Her thoughts gravitated to Lily. How was she getting on at camp? Was she fitting in? Making friends? Having fun? The texts they’d exchange offered scant insight. Lily had met a girl named Emma, who seemed nice. No further word on that development. Mal hoped lack of communication spelled good news.

“Any sensible mother would be drinking up these two precious weeks like the best wine,” Ella babbled over her martini.

“Spoken like someone _destined_ to have kids,” Ursula said.

“I’m speaking as a professional observer.”

Ursula leaned over to Mal. Her breath was laced with rum and fruit juice—Mermaid Water. “Professional gossip,” she stage-whispered.

“Don’t let me spoil your good time,” Mal remarked with a wryness that evoked more school-day memories than the reckless consumption of alcohol. This scene did have a familiar vibe: the three of them dominating the end of the bar, throwing judgmental stares at everyone. The handsomest patrons had lured Ella in, but unless the prospects proved exceptional (handsome _and_ loaded), she would swim back to her friends for another round of drinks, as thirsty and finicky as the most elusive fish.

Their added years unnerved Mal when Ella played the same game, yet by night’s end the predatory fashion designer found a strapping escort. Now she was the one dressed in money—expensive furs and perfume, diamonds of grim origin. The hunt for wealth was over; it was purely sexual conquest.

“Have we wasted ourselves?” Mal said to Ursula after Ella left, the buzz from a few whiskey sours settling in.

“What d’you mean?” Ursula said.

“I’m not saying Ella’s living it up, but maybe she’s on to something. It’s not like you and me are all . . . you know.”

“Having a hyper sex life?” Ursula managed to finish the sentence before erupting into bubbly giggles.

“Right. God.” Mal shook her head at an unexpected memory. “I didn’t even have sex to have Lily. Is that pathetic?”

Ursula waved like her hand could dispel Mal’s mood. “Sex and kids shouldn’t mix! Under any circumstances. You made a smart call.”

Mal sighed. Either she hadn’t hit the elation of inebriation yet or it had passed in a blink. “Sometimes I think I screwed both her and me over by not having a man in our lives.”

“You screwed who?” Ursula croaked over the thick background chatter of the bar.

“Me and Lily!” Mal repeated.

“What? You did what to Lily?”

“Forget it. Just some self-pity.”

“You wanna hear about self-pity? When I got in that accident . . .” And once more, Ursula launched into the horror story of the car accident that damaged her vocal chords, killing her opera career. Even as she explained, her voice grew ragged to near incomprehensibility, but there was no shutting her up. Mal flagged down the bartender for another refill, nodded at Ursula, and prayed for oblivion.

The bar ventures did a number on her head the following mornings. They might’ve been manageable if not for the routine check-ups from Fiona Vincent.

“I enjoy a good time out as much as the next person,” her mother sing-sang over the phone, starting gently but building to a crescendo that augmented the thumping behind Mal’s eyeballs. “But it doesn’t look good to the medical board when its lead researcher in her specialty calls in late due to a weeknight bender.”

Oh, the stories she could’ve told her mother about medical school, and how little changed among professionals. But sympathy had a short reach even among colleagues. If anything, one of the assistant researchers would’ve been glad to snatch the spotlight if they knew their boss called in sick. A clever doctor would’ve snuck in a nap at the sleep lab and passed it off as part of a first-person study on sleep disorders among alcoholics. Instead, Mal self-medicated with ibuprofen and turned up the intensity of her glares any time someone tried to talk to her.

“Got up on the wrong end of the bed?” Aurora Brier, one of the grad researchers, remarked when it was just the two of them in an observation room, watching their sleeping subjects and filling out spreadsheets as the data poured in.

Hung over or not, Mal knew how to arch a well-groomed eyebrow that would decimate most people. Aurora was too accustomed to it. She returned the older woman’s stare with annoying fortitude.  It reminded Mal of Rose Brier, née Mooney—Aurora’s mother, another former schoolmate with Ella and Ursula.

“Not at all,” Mal replied. “How are things in paradise?”

Aurora slid her eyes away. “Just fine, thank you.”

“Getting a good night’s sleep?”

The young woman snickered. “As much as anyone else.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”                                                                

“Does it ever occur to you that I ask about your apparent hangover out of genuine concern? Not as an invitation to make jabs about my marriage.”

Mal’s face and muted scoff made her incredulity clear. She didn’t trust proclamations of ‘genuine concern’ from anyone with the surname Brier, even a Brier by marriage. Rose had been a driven medical student. She and Mal had rivaled for high grades and attention from their professors. Aurora shared her mother’s intelligence and work ethic. She might not have harbored as much cutthroat ambition, but she remained on Mal’s radar as a usurper. It was a matter of family pride. Stephan Brier, Rose’s husband, and several relatives held prominent medical and civic jobs. Some of them had crossed paths with Fiona and Lila, too. Tension born from ambition and conflicting interest—business and government, pharmaceuticals and psychology—painted their history. In light of all this, Mal and Aurora were downright civil.

“How are things with Lily?” Aurora asked as Mal collected her coat, briefcase and handbag for the night.

Mal needed a few seconds for the question to find purchase, both from fatigue and sheer surprise. The words, “She’s fine,” stumbled over her usually self-possessed, sober tongue.

“The teen years can’t be easy,” Aurora said. “Strange to think that Phillip and I are expecting, and only ten years ago I was fighting with my mom about using her car and staying out with my boyfriend past curfew.”

“Lily isn’t there yet.” Only a few years off, she reminded herself. In a year, Lily would be old enough to get a driver’s license. A short time ago, Mal was holding the dearest person in the world in a blanket bundle and plying her with pureed pears and carrots. She was stunned to reflect on how Aunt Lila’s attitude toward little Lily had changed from disgust for the “crying poop burrito” to wistful admiration when the twelve-year-old snuck out late at night for the first time. Twelve years was objectively a substantial and reasonable amount of time for someone’s feelings to change, yet they flashed by in retrospect.

Aurora disrupted Mal’s reflections with a warm chuckle. “Don’t worry. Those years will pass, too.”

Maybe Lily’s absence had done more than leave a void in Mal’s daily routine. Instead of waiting for her daughter to come home on the school bus, or going for a surprise pickup (Lily still enjoyed that), Mal met up with Ursula and Ella at a bar or stayed home in her most comfortable chair, wallowing in the solitary silence. After the last few days of drinks and morose questions about wasted youth, Mal opted for the latter. It was a rare night of reprieve; she had a formal dinner to attend tomorrow. She’d invited Ursula as her plus one since Ella was busy at a function for her fashion company, and Mal didn’t have the energy to produce an actual date. Had Lily been around, Mal wouldn’t have subjected her to boring medical lectures, but her presence would’ve brightened each return home. Traipsing bars like a college co-ed was a trip down memory lane; curling up alone with a gin and tonic and binge-watching the original _Dark Shadows_ series was a full-blown vacation to a hollow part of her life she hadn’t mean to make.

She wasn’t lonely. Not in the romantic sense. She’d learned long ago that she wasn’t the committed type. Dating had been fun at first, but its novelty had eroded when she devoted more and more focus to medical school. All right, at one time she’d felt a little lonesome, but her solution had been to become a mother.

Not only had her daughter given her something besides her career to live for, but it had helped repair the frayed ties with the rest of her known family. The Vincent women shared ambition and venomous tempers; the three of them living together since Mal’s infancy had led to inevitable, tempestuous arguments and the necessity of separation. Fiona was far from a sentimental mother, but she found some appeal in being a grandmother. Lila insisted on resuming the “fun aunt” role for another generation—once Lily was old enough to back-sass adults, of course.

Somewhere between seasons four and five of _Dark Shadows_ , Mal put down her empty glass and picked up her phone to text Lily, only to see that the last text she’d sent hadn’t been answered yet. She tried not to sigh. Air leaked through tight-closed lips.

The phone rang in her hand. She jolted upright at the noise and vibration and the first three letters of the name of the incoming caller. Thrill deflated when she reached the last letter. The sigh fled with release. She clicked the talk button.

“Hey, Lila,” she mumbled.

A snicker. “Hitting the bottle already?”

“Just one glass. What’s going on?”

“Fiona told me you haven’t returned her last call.”

Mal’s dry laugh barely left her throat. “Tell her to join the club.”

She could almost hear Aunt Lila shake her head. “You and she would make any woman swear off motherhood. It turns you into neurotic nags.”

“I don’t nag.”

“Give it time.”

“I’m just tired. I’ll call her tomorrow. Her voicemail mentioned something about the dinner. She sounded worried, like I’d forget about it.”

“There’s that new drug coming out. She wants the dinner to go off without a hitch.”

“It’s just as important to me as it is to her.” Mal rubbed her temples. She couldn’t be getting a headache already. “It’s high school all over again.”

“Only if you let it. Don’t worry about calling her back. I’m making sure you’re not spiraling without your Lily Pad.”

“I’m just . . . it’s a little funk, ok? It’s the first time in a while Lily’s been away. Remember when I tried to sign her up for sleep-away camp? She cried her eyes out the day she was supposed to start.”

“And your mom never forgave you for bringing Lily back. Fiona would’ve driven you to camp and left you bawling.”

“Exactly.” Feeling her glass was woefully empty, Mal crawled off her chair and went to the kitchen.

“Hmm,” Lila said.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“No psych tricks. I don’t want my head shrunk right now. Or ever.”

“I wouldn’t do that to my favorite niece,” Lila cooed in a sing-song lilt.

“I’m your only niece,” Mal grumbled. Yet a smile came from the warmth budding in her chest. Not from the alcohol. The “niece” line was an old inside joke. A chuckle came from the other end. Mal still filled her glass, though only halfway.

“I’ll only point out,” Lila continued, “that maybe you’re coming to terms with the reality that this—missing Lily, feeling like you’re back to just your career—is going to be the norm someday.”

Lila had a voice like smoke and wine. She would’ve made a credible hypnotist. It’s possible she used hypnosis as part of her practice. Mal couldn’t summon enough annoyance to withstand her power. “What do I do about it?”

“I’ll admit I’m better at identifying people’s fears than offering solutions to cope with them. Find a new hobby, perhaps?”

“Are you implying motherhood is a hobby you can swap out with another?”

“You know my general opinions on parenthood. This is me attempting to be helpful.”

“The helpful thing would be to come over so I don’t drink alone.” It was a half-facetious proposal.

“What about your little friends? Where are Cruella and the Sea Witch?”

Mal groaned. “Stop calling them that.”

“No. I think they like my nicknames.”

“They really don’t. No more than I like Maleficent, or you Aunt Jibber-Jabber.”

“Oh, yeah. Why did you call me that again?”

“When I was little, you intentionally used big words I didn’t know when I was around. So I called you Jibber-Jabber to make fun of your ‘nonsense’ words.”

“Ha! You got that from me! I called you Jibber-Jabber when you first started talking and refused to shut up. You even made up your own language.”

“Ah. Nice to know something you taught me stuck.”

Lila laughed. “I’m flattered _and_ insulted.”

The heavy fog in Mal’s head faded enough that she sipped instead of gulped her cocktail and had the energy to load the dishwater and wash the more delicate dishes she’d left out from yesterday. She bid Aunt Lila good night and told her to tell Fiona that she’d be at the benefit. Having Lila and Ursula there would make it bearable. And tomorrow was one day closer to getting Lily back. She’d bear through it. The future would be easier to tackle once everyone was back where they belonged.


	5. Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Camp has come to a close. Neal and Lily consider the next step and bid Emma farewell.

“It still might be another week before I get the birth certificate,” Lily reminded Neal as they strode down the main hallway, rolling suitcases behind them. They were headed for the front door of the science building, the final crossing.

“After all this waiting,” Neal said, partly just to himself, “imagine if it turns out we’re wrong.”

“I don’t think so.” Lily smiled. It was one of the biggest changes he’d seen, her smile. He was still adjusting. “I know it sounds stupid, but I think this was supposed to happen. We found out all this stuff about our families, too much to be a coincidence. There’s just no way we’re wrong.”

Neal had to smile if only because her optimism was contagious and brought out her charming side. But he continued to mull over the possibility that they had read way too much into the photos and the coinciding dates. “If we do end up being wrong, you still want to stay in touch?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Really? I mean, I’m glad you do. But things didn’t start out great between us.”

Lily pulled at the straps of her backpack self-consciously. “I’m not good at getting along with most people. It’s part of the reason Mom sent me to camp. There’s no one left at my school who would want to hang out with me.”

“How come?”

Her deadpan look summoned a half-repressed laugh out of him. “Did sabotaging your project and punching you in the face not tip you off?”

He nodded. No arguing that. “You were worried about losing Emma. I can understand that.”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t think you’d ever do that. You get mad, sure, but like that? You’re too soft.”

“Yeah, I’m a cuddly marshmallow,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t mean I can’t understand a little.”

Her mouth twisted in an embarrassed frown. “I don’t think I really apologized.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Her smile came back, this time relieved. They met their first milestone by overtaking the threshold of the building’s entrance, only to come into the searing light of day and an even denser flow of departing campers. The swarm pushed them toward their destination, the parking lot. In their own crowded current, cars loitered along the curb to pick up their designated kids.

Both Lily and Neal swiveled their heads around. Neal asked, “Where did you tell Emma to meet us?”

“By the bus stop. There!”

He couldn’t lay eyes on the bus stop, its sign or otherwise, before Lily grabbed his sleeve and dragged him like a runaway horse for its fallen but stirrup-strapped rider. They sliced through the throng of loiterers. Most kids wanted to stand or wander so they could cling to these last few minutes of camaraderie and summertime liberation. Neal and Lily might’ve felt those pangs, too, but the anticipation of things to come, of the mystery begging to be solved, soothed such anxieties. Lily was more concerned about reaching her other friend. She went all out, bumping shoulders and nearly body-checking some slackers too oblivious to notice someone trying to get around them. A few offended faces got a quick, contrite grimace from Neal.

Emma’s shining hair finally came into his sights. She was wearing a beanie over the top of those golden locks. Despite the lush summer day, she wanted to cover her head. Baseball caps must not have been her style. She didn’t seem bothered by the heat as she turned, following Lily’s shouts. Face lighting up, she saved them time by squeezing through some shoulders and jogging over. First she hugged Lily; Lily tightly reciprocated. When the girls parted, their eyes glimmered with first tears.

“Congrats again on the prize,” Lily said to give them something more lighthearted to focus on.

“Elsa and Anna earned it,” Emma said. “Especially Anna. That girl barely let us sleep. She was _that_ determined to win.”

“I’m just glad our game came out halfway decent,” Lily said.

“Halfway?” Neal declared. “I think it came out pretty damn good, all things considered.”

“The dragons in your game were awesome,” Emma agreed. “I liked the main character, too. Did you base her on Samus from _Metroid_?”

Neal cleared his throat. “Kind of.”

“I think Neal based her on you,” Lily said off-handedly.

Emma blinked. “What?”

“She’s joking!” Neal nearly jumped out of his skin. He glared at Lily. She feigned innocent cluelessness but ruined it a giggle. Emma slapped Lily’s shoulder.

“Oh! Before I forget—” Lily poked Neal’s shoulder. “You wanna give Emma your number?”

“Huh?” A flash of warmth hit Neal’s face.

“So we can stay in touch,” Emma said. “Lily and I live pretty close to each other. She said you live in Maine, so it’ll be harder to visit.”

“Oh.” Neal could hardly keep his eyes up, yet a smile bloomed. “You’d like to talk sometime?”

“Yeah. My parents vacation in Maine for a couple weeks in August. I’ll try to convince them to let us meet up.”

He could’ve bounced like a cartoon character, but he pared back the impulse to a grin. Lily slid her gaze away, annoyed but with an empathetic smile at the end of the glance.

“Depending on the timing,” Neal said, “you might make it to my dad’s wedding.”

“Oh, cool! I’ll see what I can do.” Emma fumbled for something in her shorts’ pocket. Her cell. She asked for Neal’s number and typed it in. Just as she saved his info, the phone vibrated in her hand. She answered it. “Dad? Yeah, I’m at the bus stop.” She sighed. “Hang on, I’ll wave you down.” Phone to the chest, she gave Lily a one-armed hugged. She waved at both friends. “Miss you guys!”

“Me too!” shouted Lily as Emma skipped to the curb. In less than a minute, a pickup truck pulled alongside her. Lily and Neal got the barest glimpse of Emma’s dad, a ruggedly handsome guy, as she opened the door and jumped in. She waved to them one last time before shutting her door. Side by side, the two teens watched the truck slowly float along the river of parking lot traffic.

“Did she mean it?” Neal asked Lily.

“What, about hanging out with you in Maine? If Emma said it, she meant it. She doesn’t dick around.”

“Oh, good.” Not exactly the phrase that came to mind when he thought of Emma—“doesn’t dick around”—but it was a favorable quality.

A twinge of concern plucked him, unrelated to any future friendship with Emma. Neal looked at Lily with the frown of someone who also didn’t dick around. “Are you okay with it?”

Lily’s surprise was short-lived, as was the unease that followed. “Yeah, it is. Emma and I talked about . . . about how we wanted to stay friends. It’s a weird thing to talk about, but I wanted to get it out in the open.”

“Did you tell her why you gave me such a hard time earlier?”

“No! I’m not crazy.”

Neal’s half-smile said the words he had the manners not to voice. This time. “Were you crazy enough to tell her about our family connection?”

“No. Again, I’m _not_ crazy. I do think we’re right. I’d just rather she thought we found out after camp. Once we’re 100 percent positive. Like, pregnant positive.”

“As long as she knows that’s a metaphor. But wouldn’t it make more sense to her that you and I started getting along when we found out we’re related?”

“I guess.” The awkwardness that came with a secret set in. Lily took more interest in looking for her mom’s car.

“Hey, it’s not like we’re lying to her,” Neal reminded her. “We aren’t positive yet. When we are, we should break the news to our parents before anyone else.”

“Right,” Lily said with revived determination. “How do you think they’ll take it?”

“I have no freaking clue. Dad might say to forget about it. Maybe our parents do know about the separation and each other and didn’t want to tell us. Maybe they tried to reconnect once and it went badly.”

“If that’s the case, we need a plan to get them to reconcile.”

She was already thinking that far ahead. Neal looked at her, curious. “You want that?”

“Why not? We’re two halves of a split family tree. I thought you wanted your side and mine to, you know, have a reunion.”

“I do. But the rest of our families might not feel the same way. And . . . well, I’m a little surprised you want us to.”

Lily blinked slowly, momentarily caught up in what had to be a barrage of feelings, past and present. At last she said, “I’ve always felt like my family was . . . small. Grandma, Mom, Aunt Lila. That’s it. It’s not _bad_ , but . . . ever since I realized that most kids have two parents, and many know their grandparents from both sides, I wanted to know more about who our extended family is. It didn’t help that we don’t spend a lot of time all together. They’re all career women. Which is fine! It’s just hard to be in one place as a family. And when we are, all we want to do is bicker.”

Neal had to wonder if the same would happen if the Golds and Vincents met up. Would they simply double the fighting? Lily seemed to hope that his side would balance things out. Somehow.

“It’s not like my Dad and I never argue,” he said. “But I get it. For so long it’s just been him and me. And my great-aunts, but they live on their own. Now there’s Belle, and that’s made things easier in some ways. I hope we all gel together.”

“Are you afraid my mom, grandma and great-aunt will tear your dad apart?” Lily’s smirk suggested she’d wondered the same.

“I’m worried Dad will shoot down the idea before anyone meets. He and Grandpa barely tolerate each other. Whether he knows about your mom, he might think it’ll be more of the same. Or he’s afraid of meeting new people. Definitely not our town’s most popular citizen.”

Lily laughed. “If we do get them to talk to each other, it won’t be boring.”

Neal snorted and pictured the scene with some dread. “Yeah, no problems there.”

They spent another half hour checking their phones and sharing tidbits about their families. Lily might’ve wanted some reprieve from her family. For Neal, though, there was an incremental growth in envy. He wasn’t as close with his great-aunts as Lily was to Great-Aunt Lila (who insisted on “Aunt” Lila, thank you). He did like Penelope and Maimie. That said, their eccentricities had only intensified with age. While they always welcomed him and his father to their home, and they acted more like grandparents than Malcolm did, Neal preferred visiting when he could mentally handle the virtual transportation to another era. They grew almost everything they ate and made for themselves. They were mostly vegetarians but owned chickens and ducks they were totally willing to kill and clean. They spun their own thread and wove their own clothes! Now and then, the aunts let Pop buy stuff for them. On the upside, Neal frequently found himself on the receiving end of scarves, socks, sweaters and knitted hats that were sensibly styled. He probably ate the healthiest meals of anyone at his school when Maimie dropped off homemade dishes.

If Neal thought he was envious, Lily nearly seethed green to hear him mention the home-cooked meals. Everyone in her family was so busy that most dinners were take-out. She loved Chinese, Japanese and Indian food, but she ended up longing for the rare occasions, usually holidays, when her mom and grandmother put together a meal themselves. Fifi—that’s what she called her grandmother—was quite deft around the kitchen, almost as skilled as she was at managing her pharmaceutical company. Mal, Lily’s mom, tended to overcook food, but she rocked it with the home fryer. Aunt Lila didn’t cook; she insisted on being served what small portions she subsisted on.

Just as Lily was about to recount the fiasco that was last Thanksgiving, a nearby car emphatically honked. They snapped to attention. A mauve-and-white Chevrolet Bel-Air, looking as a new as if it had time-traveled from the 1950s, sat by the curb, rumbling like an impatient beast.

“That’s me,” Lily said with a sigh.

Neal couldn’t help ogling the vintage car. “Wow! That’s some ride.”

“I know. It’s embarrassing. I keep telling my mom to get something less hokey.”

“I think it’s kind of cool.”

Lily swiveled her eyes to him. “You like Volkswagen Beetles, too?”

“Yeah, sure,” Neal said hesitantly.

“I knew you were hopeless.” Smirking, she hugged him. “Be seeing you soon, I hope.”

“Me, too.” When Neal hugged her, it did feel like embracing a long-lost sister. That’s when he remembered his invitation to Emma. Oh, crap! How could’ve forgotten to ask? “Hey, Lily, I think I know just the opportunity for our parents to meet.”

Lily pulled back to meet his eye. “Yeah?”

“You and your family could come to the wedding. I’m not sure when it’s happening, but you should come. As family.”

Lily’s face blossomed like a flower on the first warm spring day. Her expression had a radiance that could’ve lit up a city at night. It was almost as goofy as it was endearing. “That would be great!”

Neal helped her with the suitcase to the car. Lily opened the backseat door first so Neal could load it in, then opened the passenger door. In the driver’s seat sat a blond woman in her late forties, possibly just turned fifty. A brief glimpse at Neal was dismissed to greet Lily. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said with an understated warmth that rang familiar to him.

“Hi, Mom.” Lily climbed in and kissed the woman. “Uh, this is Neal. Neal, my mom.”

If Mrs. Vincent caught the flutter in her daughter’s voice, she didn’t let on her awareness. She regarded Neal again with more scrutiny. He tried to politely study her face while giving a friendly hello and wave. Her hair and eye color didn’t match his father’s, but there might’ve been a resemblance to Grandpa Malcolm. She did share Rumford’s gift of civility that belied a stare meant to leave people feeling they were under a judgmental microscope.

“Did you and Lily have a good time?” she asked.

What did that mean? Did she think he was Lily’s friend, or something more? What the hell was he worried about? Oh, right, because this woman might or might not be his secret aunt, and she might already be measuring him up ahead of time.

“Yeah, we did. She and I did a project together.”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Lily intervened. “Neal’s dad will be here soon.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Mrs. Vincent with a head tilt. Neal had no idea how to interpret that.

“You, too. Bye, Lily!”

Lily bid him goodbye. As the car pulled away, she lowered her window and waved to him until the car reached the end of the lane and turned to circle around to the parking lot’s exit. Neal waved the whole time. Simultaneously, he prayed he hadn’t just screwed up his first meeting with Lily’s—his—family.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who follow my Tumblr blog, im-not-a-what, I've been spouting some nonsense about a Maleficent-and-Rumple-are-siblings fic since we learned that the Black Fairy is Rumple's mother in canon. It's finally coming to you, so now you can witness the madness yourself. Sorry I didn't get to the reveal in this chapter, but you know it's coming (this is basically The Parent Trap with separated-at-birth siblings instead of divorced parents).


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